Killerton ~ The Suffrage Campaign

Last Thursday marks the first adventure of 2018. I really struggled with this. It would have been so easy to have not gone, to have let disasters and issues keep me home but I decided it was time to make a point and went. I stayed local and made sure I was able to get back quickly should it be needed and although I didn’t quite relax as much as I have done in the past {possible because I had worked myself into a terrified panic over a GP apt that went very well before the adventure} it still helped. I have spent every day since trying to persuade blogger it wanted to upload the photos!

I visited Killerton House and Gardens. The gardens are beautiful as they come into flower at this time of year. There’s some beautiful natural tree sculptures and the wildlife can come close if the area is quiet, which today thankfully was.

The house currently has an exhibition of the suffrage campaign. It’s the centenary year this year and the Aclands who used to own the house were involved in the campaign. Eleanor Acland was a Suffragist. The difference between a Suffragist and a Suffragette is a Suffragist was campaigning through letters to parliament where as the Suffragettes were led by Emmeline Pankhurst who was arrested on multiple times, went on hunger strike and was more militant in her approach to the cause and her actions were made increasingly more famous by Emily Davison who threw herself under the kings horse at the Derby. There were members of the family who were against the movement too.

There was also an excellent display on when various countries achieved suffrage for women, with Saudi Arabia being the most recent in 2015. I hope to return before the exhibition ends in time for the Christmas exhibition because I don’t believe that everything can be taken in in one visit.